Moments to Remember
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: The afterlife, as it turned out, featured a bland secondary school classroom with a teacher standing up the front blurting the same four lines over and over again. Rose/Ten II


The afterlife, as it turned out, featured a bland secondary school classroom with a teacher standing up the front blurting the same four lines over and over again like some kind of super-condensed rendition of Groundhog Day. I wasn't much different, then, than how things had been for Rose Tyler before she'd fancied that she'd fallen in love and subsequently left her education behind.

She was disappointed that someone in Post-Death Administration had apparently ticked the column for 'Hell' against her name, or had at the very least ensured that she would spend some time hanging out in Purgatory, for there was no chance that even the most idiotic or uncaring entity would ever believe that living through her school years on a loop would be any kind of Heaven for Rose. Still, as these things went, she figured she could have done a lot worse. Unless the plan was to torture her for all eternity with pure boredom, God (or whoever the heck decided these things) had gone easy on her.

By far the worst part, actually, was that the Doctor wasn't here. She'd only just got him back a few months ago (one of him, anyway, even if it wasn't _exactly _the same man she'd been torn away from in the first place). Her chest ached as she realised she'd been even more permanently separated from him just because some idiot driver had been drinking, or had dropped something and leaned down to pick it up instead of watching the road, or whatever it was that had made them suddenly swerve into Rose's lane doing about 70 miles per hour. A half-remembered swirl of flashing headlights and screeching metal had abruptly ended Rose's trip home from a suspected minor alien incursion just outside London. She hated to think of him getting the news, or seeing whatever was left behind in the crash. She'd much rather be there with him, comforting him.

Rose thought that fate could just stop having its joke at her expense any minute now, thanks. And at the Doctor's expense as well, for that matter, because he'd been separated from their universe and their TARDIS (Rose insisted on claiming some ownership over that ship that had been literally _part _of her for a while, regardless of how the Doctor's possessiveness might have suggested otherwise) so that he could spend his remaining lifetime with her. So much for growing old together.

The reality fully hit her through the ridiculous almost-comedy of having the same stupid moment repeatedly playing out around her. She was _dead_. Gone. She was probably buried in some overly magnificent wooden contraption that Pete had sprung for. And it was completely possible that she was _never_ going to escape from this damn classroom. She couldn't imagine that the Doctor, however much he might have wanted to, could actually travel into death itself to save her from this when he couldn't even cross universes to get her back. Then again, Rose thought, _she'd_ done pretty well getting herself out of that situation. Maybe she could pull off a sort of zombie-style Houdini moment and escape from the certain death of real, actual _certain death_.

She explored the bounds of the classroom, looking for a way out. She tried to open and eventually kicked at windows beyond which shone a strange white blankness. She tried to open a door out into the hallway that was now firmly locked even though she knew the teacher had never done so in reality, given how vigilant her school had been about fire safety after some kid had set the corner of the library ablaze with a misplaced cigarette butt. After a while, exhausted – she found it annoying that she still got tired even when she was dead – she settled back into the seat she'd abandoned. Tired or not, though, she couldn't seem to fall asleep, which would have been far preferable to being awake to witness the same moments over and over again.

"... formed at Runnymede on June 15, 1215," her old History teacher informed her _yet again_, and Rose decided she'd had enough of just sitting there and passively trying not to listen.

"I always wished I'd told you how deadly borin' your classes were before I left school, and see just how right I was?" Rose told Mr Whiteman over the top of his monologue. Just like everyone else in the room, he didn't seem to take any notice of her. To be honest, he probably wouldn't have noticed her even if she _was_ able to in any way impact her surroundings here. She doubted she had actually spoken once during this lesson, given how much she'd hated sitting through History. If it hadn't been for the Doctor allowing her to actually _experience_ it first-hand, Rose would never have realised that anything interesting had ever happened at all prior to the late 20th century. Which reminded her… "And by the way," Rose added, "you seriously had no idea what you were talkin' about with everythin' you taught us about the First Crusade. Trust me, I know. Believe it or not, I was _there_."

Mr Whiteman continued to ignore her, but that wasn't the point. Even if he didn't know it, Rose finally felt like she was one up on a teacher who hadn't made much of a secret of the fact that he hadn't thought she would ever amount to much. She knew he probably wouldn't even be alive if not for her, given how many times she'd helped to save Britain, and the whole Earth, and even the entire universe a few times. She'd more than proven herself, though she couldn't help but remember how much _more _she'd still wanted to do, having established what she was capable of.

She pointedly reminded herself that finding a way out of this would hardly be the first impossible thing that had ever happened to her, and she clung to the idea that this wasn't _it_. This wasn't how the rest of her life – her _existence_, she corrected herself somewhat sadly – was going to be spent.

Each time the loop repeated, however, for what felt like days, weeks, or even _months_, that conviction took tiny blows. Rose, with her head laid on top of her hands that were clasped against the desk, attempted to tune out of the sounds of the classroom and tried not to flinch each time a piece of chalk started scraping against the blackboard before the loop reset and it happened again.

Over and over, the boy beside her (she thought his name was Richard, but she couldn't remember his surname for the life of her) raggedly carved the same pair of naked breasts into the wood of the top of his desk, and Katie Shaw giggled with some girl who'd never spoken a word to Rose throughout all the years they went to school together, and Brian Fox flicked a folded note onto some blonde girl named Sarah's desk while she darted a glance at it as if unsure whether she wanted to pick it up and read it or not. Even if she'd still been a teenager and able to easily cope and empathise with this kind of adolescent behaviour, Rose thought she'd still have had enough of it by about the fifth time around, let alone the millionth.

She could really see a distinct prospect of going stark raving insane if she did have to spend all of eternity here.

"Get me out of here," she whispered just as repetitively as everything else that was being said in that room.

She didn't want to stay there. She felt like she'd rather be _anywhere _other than there.

But when the world around her seemed to tilt and the classroom appeared to fall away just as she'd been pleading for, Rose found herself grabbing at the edges of her desk, trying to keep herself in place. As much as she wanted the constant recurrence of every dull detail to stop and would give just about anything to escape back to reality – to where her family and the Doctor were waiting for her – she was also completely terrified that the higher power that had been playing a cruel trick on her had figured that this wasn't a bad enough end for her after all and decided to dump her further into Hell. As a last ditch effort to remain grounded there, for the first time she actively tried to focus on Mr Whiteman's droning voice and unchanging words instead of drowning it all out. No matter how hard she tried to stay in place, though, she could feel herself slipping... slipping...

"To no one will we sell," Rose announced as she bolted upright, gasping as if she'd just breached the surface of some deep body of water. The sudden harshness of the light in her eyes seemed to lend credence to the idea that she'd been cocooned in the dark of the ocean or something similar. A frantic beeping drew her attention off to the side, and she squinted against the painful whiteness until she could make out the outline of the machine from which the noise was coming. As Rose's panic started to die away, the beeping decreased in frequency, and Rose finally realised that she was looking at a heart rate monitor.

"Rose," she heard, and when she turned her head her heart sped up slightly again, but this time in a very welcome way.

"Mum," she rasped. She'd never been so happy to see anyone in her life, after figuring that the only friendly face she'd ever see again was the repeating memory of Shareen grinning at her from across the classroom as if sharing a joke that Rose couldn't remember years after the fact. Having her Mum there was more like a dream to her than what she'd been experiencing for longer than she wanted to think about.

Either she'd been upgraded to Heaven (in which case, as much as she loved her Mum, she couldn't believe that the Doctor _still _wasn't here with her, damn it), or her suspicions of her death had been greatly exaggerated.

As if she could read what Rose was thinking (which would definitely explain all those times she'd seemed to know when Rose had been lying to her), her Mum informed her, "You've been in a coma for days, sweetheart. We thought we'd lost you at first, and then it seemed like you were gonna pull through, but when you still didn't wake up..."

Rose swallowed at that casual mention of 'we'. "The Doctor?" she asked.

"Oh, himself's passed out in the waitin' room. You know how he forgets that he actually needs to sleep now. He's been hoverin' over you every second for days except for when the nurses boot him out, and even then he kicks up a bigger fuss than Tony does at bedtime. About time he crashed. Though I'm surprised he's not already boundin' in here just somehow _knowin' _you're awake; you two are so glued to each other that I half thought you would've had some kind of mind speak goin' on."

Rose knew that she should probably let him sleep, knowing how exhausted he must have been given what her Mum had just told her, but she was certain the Doctor would forgive her this tiny moment of selfishness, because he'd want to see her just as much as she's dying to have him hovering, as her Mum put it. "Can you get him for me? Please?" she asked.

"Oh, never mind me sittin' here tirelessly by your bedside as well. I'm just yesterday's news, like usual."

Rose, knowing that her Mum wasn't serious, just rolled her eyes pointedly at her.

"Right, right, I'm goin'," Jackie said. Before she turned to leave, though, she asked, "By the way, what was that about sellin' you said when you woke up?"

"Long story," Rose said. "Long, _long _story. Too long. Let's just say I wish I'd paid more attention in history class, 'cause then I might've remembered more than twenty seconds of it at a stretch. I'm definitely never gonna forget the Magna Carta date now, and if I hear that line about delayin' justice one more time I'm gonna seriously scream."

Jackie didn't seem to know what to make of that, but she didn't ask anything further about it. That was just as well, Rose thought, given that she was definitely going to have to tell the whole story to the Doctor, who'd without question find it all completely fascinating. Picturing his enthralled expression as he listened, though, she doubted telling him the details of her experience would actually end up feeling like much of a chore. She just couldn't believe she'd get the opportunity to even talk to him again.

Alive. She realised that she really was still _alive_.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw the Doctor nearly skid past the door to her hospital room because he was moving in such a hurry. Only a hand clenching quickly around the doorframe stopped him in time, and he hauled himself inside the room and practically leapt the length of it to her side.

"Rose," he choked out.

"Hey," she replied with a small smile.

"I thought..."

"I know. So did I."

"The doctors – not the _Doctor _doctors, of course, but those hacks that think they're qualified just because they earned, and I use that term lightly, a degree in medicine in early 21st century Earth, of all places. Anyway, the doctors said that they didn't think you had a good chance, but I told them they were idiots, because they didn't know you. Not Rose Tyler, I said. Rose Tyler doesn't let a little thing like a head-on collision stop her." At that point his voice broke slightly, signalling the end of his ramble.

"Good thing _you _know me well enough to set them straight, then," Rose said.

The Doctor nodded, looking as though he was trying not to cry. Rose didn't think she'd ever seen him get like that before except the first time she'd visited Bad Wolf Bay. Normally when he was upset he just got a sort of blank expression on his face. Even though she would have preferred not to worry him so much in the first place, it was still sort of nice to know that she seemed to be the thing that affected him enough to break through that.

"I should go get you something to eat," the Doctor announced. "You've had nothing but this stupid I.V. fluid that doesn't give you half the things a human body needs for days now. I'll just go and –"

"No," Rose interrupted. She reached for him weakly, and he met her halfway, gripping her hand in his. "Stay, please," she begged.

The Doctor subsided and sat down obediently in the chair beside her. He brought her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss on her knuckles.

"I love you," he said, the words coming so easily that Rose had trouble remembering that there had been a time when they'd been taboo between them. The Doctor then just sat there, staring at her, drinking in the moment silently. Rose totally understood the instinct to try to memorise this, and she joined in doing so herself.

She promised herself that if she ever got stuck in another coma she'd make sure that _this _was the twenty seconds she'd get to live through again and again.

~FIN~


End file.
